To Be Wanted
by MintSauce
Summary: Mandy always felt like she knew her brother pretty well. They weren't close, but still she knew him, right? Apparently not. Ian/Mickey multi-chap fic.
1. Chapter 1

**Right, I know I have several multi-chapters going on at the moment. But I wrote this one and I figured I might as well put it up. If it gets too confusing just message me and tell me to shut the hell up and pause doing one for a while. Either way, my excuse is having several on the go keeps me interested (I have the attention span of a goldfish) but either way enjoy…**

**And just in case it bothers anyone: this fic involves a suicide attempt. **

Mandy would admit, she kind of hated Ian having a boyfriend. And not just because she was maybe a tiny bit in love with him, but also because she was bored. She never got to see him anymore. He was always off with Toby and when he wasn't with him, he was talking about him. Although, Mandy still clung to her opinion that actually, Ian didn't seem to like the guy as much as he was claiming to.

She knew Ian. And as far as she was concerned, he was trying to lie to himself.

What she wasn't sure was whether or not that was just wishful thinking.

Thinking about it afterwards, she'd never actually been more glad to be bored out of her brain, because if she hadn't been bored, she wouldn't have gone to find Mickey. Because that was how sad Mandy's life had become. No Ian meant she had literally nobody to hang around with, so she resorted to tracking down the brother she actually didn't mind being around and was planning on bribing him with beer and weed to get him to go to the movies with her or something.

As it happened, they never even made it to the movies, because before that the shit hit the fan.

She found Mickey sitting on his bedroom floor, his back propped against the bed and his head tipped back, which was weird enough, because even when drunk out of his mind, Mickey always seemed to make it to his bed. But it was the several empty packets and bottles of painkillers on the floor next to him that was the worrying part.

It felt like the world was spinning around her as she crashed down to her knees next to Mickey. She could see his eyes were still open and she slapped his face none too gently, because the fear inside of her gut was threatening to make her throw up. "Mickey?" she slapped him again and he blinked. And Mandy could honestly say she had never been so glad to see somebody blink in her entire life.

"Did you take all of these?" she asked him and grabbed his chin to try and force him to look at her. He blinked again, his eyes trying to focus. "Mickey? Did you swallow all of these?"

If she hadn't been holding his chin, she wouldn't have noticed, but after a second he nodded.

She didn't hesitate after that, she just called the ambulance because she refused to lose the only brother she didn't think was a complete douche. Mickey's head was lolling about when she got off the phone, but they'd told her to keep him awake, so she slapped him again, hard.

He moaned low in his throat and tried to turn his head away from her, but her hold on the sides of his face, keeping his head up, wouldn't let him. "What the fuck?" she asked him quite simply, because in her mind, even though Mickey was a fuck up just like them all, she'd never pegged him as being suicidal. She thought she knew her brother quite well, but apparently she didn't.

She hadn't thought Mickey was the sort to get depressed, especially not to get so depressed that he'd try and off himself.

"No fucking point," he mumbled eventually, his words slurred and she slapped him again, a little more gently this time since his cheek was turning pink underneath his stubble. "He don't want me."

His eyes started drooping shut again, but when she knocked her forehead against his lightly, they opened again. Mickey had always used to do that to her when they were kids and sometimes on rare occasions when they were older. It was their affectionate gesture, just between them.

"Who, Mick?" she asked, because honest to God she'd fuck them up. She didn't care who it was. If someone had managed to upset her brother this much, she'd kill them. She didn't know how the hell someone could upset Mickey that much, but that didn't really matter too much. All that mattered was that they had done.

"Firecrotch," he mumbled right when she thought he might have passed out and Mandy was pretty sure her heart actually stopped beating. But at the same time things started falling into place. Like why Mickey _never_ brought girls home and why Ian actually tolerated her brother. Why Mickey had managed to land a job at the Kash and Grab and why he scowled whenever she had a gushy moment about Ian.

"Shit," she muttered and she meant that for more than one reason. _Shit_, because her brother had obviously had his heart broken. _Shit_, because Mickey actually apparently had feelings. _Shit_, because her brother had been fucking her fake-boyfriend. _Shit_, because she was kind of in love with said fake-boyfriend. And _shit_, because she'd still kick Ian's fucking ass for making Mickey like this.

She put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him down against her, hugging him tight because she was too afraid to look if he'd fallen unconscious, too afraid to check if he was even still breathing. She just kept her face pressed into her brother's hair and stared at the opposite wall, at one of Mickey's drawings that he'd stuck up, because her brother couldn't do a lot, but he could draw.

She didn't know when the hell she'd started crying, but she didn't care to stop. She cried even as the paramedics arrived, as Mickey's stomach was pumped, as he was taken to the hospital, as he lay in that bed all hooked up with tubes and wires and she was told that he would wake up in his own time, but they didn't know when. She cried as she sat the next to him, the only one that gave enough of a shit to come even if anybody else did know. Their Dad was in jail again, so were two of their brothers and the others wouldn't care. She could tell their Mum, but she'd always hated Mickey most of all for no reason whatsoever.

So Mandy just sat there on her own and cried, because she didn't know what she was going to do if she lost Mickey. Because Mickey wasn't a great person, he wasn't even a good one. But he'd been her brother. Her favourite brother. He'd been the one who'd held her hair back when she was sick, who'd hugged her when she'd had a nightmare. He'd been the one to beat up people who made her cry without her even asking him to, to walk her to school because she was scared of the hobo that lived in the alley she had to pass. He was the one who took her to movies when she was bored, looked after her when she had the flu and didn't make too much noise when she had a hangover.

He was her brother. He was Mickey. And she hadn't even known he was gay, let alone that he'd been in love. Because he'd deny it, even after this, if he woke up, he'd deny it. Because that was what Mickey did. And sure, she was a little bit pissed off that he'd been fucking her boyfriend, but there were much bigger things to worry about really. And she was more pissed off at Ian than she was at Mickey at the moment, so it sort of levelled things out.

"You better fucking make it through this," she hissed at him, her fingers holding his tight, "And you better not be any more retarded than you already are, douche bag, I mean it."

She didn't know if he could hear her, but she'd heard on one of her television programs that Mickey referred to as 'faggy crap' that people in comas were aware of what went on around them sometimes. She snorted to herself through her tears at the thought of Mickey calling anything gay. She hadn't had a clue that went for him as well. She was actually quite impressed with how well he'd hidden it.

She stayed in the hospital for two days straight not wanting to leave for even a second in case Mickey woke up, but after the second day, she had to admit to herself that she was sort of starting to smell. Her hair was greasy and she'd tied it up to try and make it look less so, but she was starting to feel uncomfortable in her own skin. She honestly didn't have a clue how Mickey could cope with being quite so grimy all the time. He was cleaner then than she had ever seen him.

She touched Mickey's cheek briefly before she left, knowing he would have hated her for doing something as sappy as bending down and kissing his forehead. Just in case he was aware of what was going on, she didn't want to risk the earache. Because her brother would wake up, he _had_ to. It was just a case of when.

"Be back soon assface," she told him, skimming her fingers down his forearm and having to practically tear herself away.

She cried again on the El and flipped off the homeless person who stared at her. She thought she was entitled to her crappy emotions, to her grief, but she didn't particularly feel like sharing it with anyone. Which was why when she got home, she walked straight past Iggy where he was sitting on the couch and ignored him. He wouldn't care about Mickey being in the hospital, but he'd probably ask why the fuck Mickey had tried to off himself and Mandy would be damned if she was outing him to the other douchebags. They'd probably slit his throat while he was in his coma if they found out. Mandy didn't know a hell of a lot, but she was sure about that.

She only felt better when she stood in the shower, the water only luke warm because their water heater was shitty and had never quite worked right after Nicky had smacked it with a baseball bat in a fit of anger. She walked with her eyes screwed shut on her way to the bathroom, not wanting to look at Mickey's bedroom, at her brother's stuff and the empty packets of drugs that were still there on the floor. She just couldn't. But the shower definitely helped. She liked to imagine that the water swirling down the drain wasn't just washing away the grime and the dirt, but that it was taking the pain with it.

Because Mandy knew if Mickey was awake he'd tell her to man the fuck up, because she was a Milkovich. She'd cried too much already and it was a waist of fucking air. She had to be strong enough to cope, she had to be able to face everything and anything, because she was Mandy Milkovich and she'd never admit it, but the only person she'd ever wanted to be proud of her was Mickey. She'd wanted to impress a lot of people, sure, but Mickey was the only one she wanted to be proud. That was why she'd tried so hard when he'd taught her to draw, why she'd learnt to match him in a shots competition and why she knew how to fight.

He'd think it was stupid if he could hear the thoughts in her head, but she couldn't help it. They'd been there ever since she'd been four and Mickey had snuck her out the window and carried her ten blocks to a shitty little park, hiding away with her until they both forgot that their parents were back at home arguing. A lot of people would say that Mandy was too young to remember that, but she did anyway. She remembered Mickey squeezing her fingers tight, remembered that the look of pain and fear in his eyes mirrored hers. She remembered them both praying that their Mum wouldn't actually leave this time. She hadn't done. She'd left three months later and Mickey had crouched down in front of her and told her not to cry, because the bitch wasn't worth it.

Mickey had hated anyone making her cry even then. The others had never given much of a shit, but Mickey had cared. And that was why Mickey had always been Mandy's lifeline to some extent, not that she'd fucking tell him that. No way.

She got out of the shower only when it turned cold and she shivered there standing in her towel, roughly drying her hair and then padding back through Mickey's room with her eyes screwed shut. She hated that she sort of expected it to all be a dream and that he'd be there on his bed, passed out on his front and snoring, just like always at this time in the day.

In her room, she went through the usual routine. She pretended everything was normal, just for a while as she put on a too-small skirt with her steel-toed boots and a shirt that she looped up through the neck because the air was hot and sticky outside. She put on her make-up, put on so much that she almost felt like a doll, the black lines thick under her eyes to cover up the dark smudge of tiredness. She blow-dried her hair and straightened it, putting so much hairspray onto it that it crunched under her hands when she touched it and she gagged and almost choked when she inhaled.

It was only when she looked in the mirror that she had to drop the pretence. Because she could hardly forget what had happened when the boots she wore had used to be Mickey's and the laces were mismatched because he had used one set once to choke a kid until he apologised for calling Mandy a slut. Her shirt was actually Mickey's as well and the tear in the shoulder was from when Mickey had snagged it on a fence running from the cops. And the skirt was one she knew Mickey hated and the amount of make-up she had on would have made him grimace.

Sometimes she felt like there wasn't a single thing that didn't remind her of Mickey. She'd never realised that before. Even the colours in her hair were there because of Mickey, because he'd done it for her so that she wouldn't end up looking like an idiot. He had complained the entire time about the smell and had refused to let her put a streak in his no matter how many times she'd begged.

Scowling, Mandy changed into a pair of shorts that didn't ride up her ass every time she took a step and scrubbed all of the make-up off her face. She didn't wear the top properly, but that was because it was too hot. She didn't even know why she'd done that, maybe it was because she thought by some fluke it would make Mickey wake up. Not that he could even see her.

She smacked Iggy round the back of the head as she walked out just because he was a shitty brother and because he wouldn't give a shit if she told him about Mickey. He swore at her, but she was already gone out the front door, slamming it harder than was necessary.

She lit up a cigarette as she walked, sucking on it frantically and then lighting up another as soon as she flicked the butt away. She was planning on heading back to the hospital, but she found herself outside of the Kash and Grab before she even had time to think about the direction she was heading in. Taking a deep breath, she told herself that she wasn't a fucking pussy, she was a Milkovich and slammed open the door, not even bothering to put out her cigarette. She just trapped it between her lips and completely ignored Ian where he sat behind the counter. But she did notice that Lip was leaning against it in front of his brother and she made the decision then that she hated them both.

And why? Because they were smiling and laughing, about as carefree as a person could possibly get. Lip was sipping casually from a beer an as she walked she could hear Ian laughing, knew he had his head tipped back up toward the ceiling, his eyes partially closed and that mouth wide and grinning. She'd never hated anyone more in her life. Because he was laughing while her brother lay in a fucking hospital bed, _because_ _of_ _him_. It didn't even matter to her that Ian didn't know, she still hated him.

She put it down to the fact that they always said there was a fine line between love and hate; but rules also flew out of the window when Mickey was concerned. Especially now. Especially given that he'd tried to off himself.

She clenched her fists down at her side and sucked on the cigarette again before dropping it and crushing it under the bottom of her boots. She grabbed two cans of energy drink, she didn't look which one and also got some Jell-O from the other aisle. She didn't look at Ian once, or Lip, even though she could practically feel Ian's confusion over why Mandy hadn't greeted him yet and she knew Lip was staring at her ass. But she didn't care, Mandy was past caring about any of the fucking Gallaghers anymore.

She'd decided. And when Mandy made a decision like that, he fucking stuck to it. Mickey had always said she was a stubborn bitch. It was true.

"Hey Mands," Ian said, grinning at her when she came to stand in front of him.

Not saying anything, Mandy leant across the counter and grabbed the plastic bag that obviously had Ian's lunch in. She upended it onto the counter, ignoring Ian's protests and put the Jell-O and the drinks into the bag, she also grabbed a few Snickers bars from the box beside her. She had Mickey's two favourite things and something to keep her awake. She was set.

There was just one more thing she had to do.

She closed her fingers into a fist and pulled her arm back, punching Ian in the jaw so fast he never saw it coming and so hard that her knuckles throbbing instantly. She bared her teeth at him in the way Mickey had always done in a fight, resisting the urge to laugh as Ian fell back against the wall. "If there is anything wrong with him, I will kill you myself," she snarled out through clenched teeth, flexing her fingers down by her side to try and ease some of the pain out.

And with that she just walked out, not even giving either of the Gallaghers a chance to say anything. She didn't want to hear it anyway. She was fucking done with them.


	2. Chapter 2

Mickey woke up two weeks after Mandy had walked into his room to find him there and typically he was desperate to leave as soon as his eyes opene. He didn't say anything about Ian, or about trying to kill himself and Mandy didn't press him to. She knew she had to let him think things through, just like she knew she had to pretend that she didn't see the bitterness and the pain in her brother's eyes.

But Mandy knew her brother and even though she can see that he was trying to pretend like nothing ever happened, he was still different. He still cursed and swore at her, made a few snide comments, but his heart didn't seem to be in it. And he never started any of their conversations, it always had to be her. Mickey was just quieter than she was accustomed to him being and it was that simple fact that was enough to remind her what had happened. It was enough to make her want to protect her badass big brother for some fucked up reason.

Not that she'd ever tell him that, because depressed or not, Mickey would still hate her for it and would no doubt set something of hers on fire. He'd never hit her, would never harm her physically - twisting her tits when she annoyed him didn't count - but Mickey did have a habit of burning things.

Thankfully, the one thing she counted whatever lucky fucking stars she had for, was that even though he wasn't the same, there was nothing medically wrong with Mickey. Aside from the fact that he looked exhausted and a little ill, he was perfectly healthy. Which the doctor had told them was a fucking miracle considering how many pills Mickey had swallowed and the fact he had gone into a coma.

Mandy just put it down to the Milkovichs being fucking stubborn.

On the El, Mickey didn't say anything. He just sat low in his seat with his arms wrapped around himself and his feet up on the rest of the seat, meaning Mandy had to sit behind him. And she didn't say anything either, because she could see how pained he was. She kept wondering what he was thinking. She kept wanting to ask what had happened between him and Ian, because it was obvious something had. But Mandy didn't, she just kept her mouth shut because she knew that chances were, even in his exhausted, depressed-as-fuck state, Mickey would bolt.

So all she did was hand him a pot of Jell-O that she'd forgotten she had in her bag and the weak smile he gives her was more than enough to let her know that maybe everything wasn't going to be completely fucked from then on. That maybe Mickey was going to be okay.

"Where the fuck have you been hiding?" Iggy asked from where he was sprawled out on th couch, lazily drinking from a beer and watching what looked to be porn on the television.

Mandy scrunched up her nose at how disgusting her brothers could be sometimes and smiled to herself when Mickey's only answer was, "Fuck off." She thought it probably would have broken what was left of her heart to break if he'd done anything else. Or worse, done nothing at all. Because Mickey had never just lain down and taken what their brothers dished out. He may have been the shortest and the youngest boy, but he was smarter and he held his own.

She followed Mickey into his room, watching him as he looked around. No doubt he was noticing that she'd finally gotten around to cleaning up the packets of painkillers and even some of the other stuff. Mickey's room had always been a mess though, that was the way he liked it as far as she knew, so she hadn't done much else. The little washing she'd done was folded and put away in his drawers already.

"You going to be okay?" Mandy asked him, knowing he would hate the question, but she had to ask for her own piece of mind more than anything else.

Mickey shrugged when he looked at her and that had not been the answer she was hoping for at all. She'd wanted him to swear at her, not look at her in a way that was so completely un-Mickey that she wanted to hug him and never let go. It was stupid. Mickey had never been the weak one, he'd never needed looking after, had never let any emotions show. But now Mandy was watching him look around his room like he didn't know anything anymore.

He was looking not just like he was broken, but like he always had been. Just like all of them. Every Milkovich was broken or scarred in some way, using drugs, alcohol and anger to patch up the cracks and stitch up the seams. But Mickey looked like he'd long since forgotten where he put the duct tape to put himself back together. He didn't even look like he wanted to be whole again.

"Mick, tell me what you want me to do?" she asked, sounding more helpless than she ever had done before. She never wanted to hear herself like that ever again. "Just tell me how I can fix this." _How I can fix you_!

He managed a small sort of smile when he met her eyes and he had her wanting to cry. She wanted to cry and kick and scream under the weight of the sadness in the room. Mandy could feel it, but she felt strange because she didn't even know what that sadness was over. "I don't even fucking know," he admitted and for just a split second he almost sounded like himself. Except he didn't at all.

"Want me to make some eggs?" she asked, completely at loss for words, "That hospital food looking pretty shit."

She thought his grimace was probably supposed to be a smile. "Yeah whatever," he muttered, pretending to be himself.

A part of her wanted to tell him to quit it and to just curl up in a ball or whatever and cry. She wanted to tell him to talk about it. To do something, anything, just to get it out of his system. But they were Milkovich's and he was Mickey and that wasn't going to happen regardless of whether or not she wanted it to.

Iggy had disappeared by the time she walked out of Mickey's room, which she counted as a good thing because there was no fucking way she was going to cook for him. She managed to coax Mickey out of his room and sit him down in the kitchen. He put too much ketchup on his eggs, just like always and picked at the bacon with his fingers, eating too fast. Tha was exactly the same as usual, except there was a tension in the air that hung between them like rope.

It was like he knew she was going to ask questions, was waiting for her to, but Mandy was just waiting for the right time to voice them. She didn't know if there ever would be a right time, but she knew she'd have to ask him sooner or later, otherwise the curiosity was just going to eat away at her insides.

When someone knocked on the front door, Mandy had every intention to ignore it. Especially with the way that Mickey tensed up at the sound. "Mandy!"

She jumped at the sound of her name being yelled and cast a glance at Mickey, who looked like he was about to be sick. Because they both recognised the voice. They both knew it was Lip. No doubt they were both praying to whatever God there was up there that Ian wasn't with him.

"Mandy, I know you're fucking in there!" Lip yelled through the wood, "I saw you go inside."

And she could feel her lips twisting into a sneer at the idea that he'd been watching the house. She wondered how many times he'd come around and found she wasn't there. It had been two weeks since she'd punched Ian and she should have known that they'd come looking for an explanation. Or at least Lip would, being the protective big brother and all that shit. It hadn't been intentional, but she knew she'd avoided them by having spent practically all of her time at the hospital waiting for Mickey to wake up.

"Mandy, I just want to talk!" Lip yelled again, pounding on the door some more.

They should probably count themselves lucky that their Dad was in jail again, otherwise he would have been as pissed as hell at the noise. Then again, their Dad got pissed over pretty much everything anyway, so it wouldn't have been any sort of surprise. At least it would have chased Lip off for a while.

Mickey didn't look at her, his eyes were locked on his half-eaten meal. He only looked up when she went into the weapons cupboard and grabbed a handgun. "What the fuck are you doing?" he asked, catching her wrist, his eyes wide and panicked looking. Sort of reminding her of a startled deer.

"Calm your tits," she told him, probably a little more harshly than was necessary, but Mickey didn't need anyone mollycoddling him. He never had. Even their mum hadn't been stupid enough to try. Not that she had actually ever given enough of a shit about Mickey to try. "It's just to make sure he stays away, I wouldn't actually shoot him."

Ian she couldn't make any promises about if he was there. But hey, the guy had already signed up to get his ass shot off. It would just be practice. Mandy had almost completely forgotten what it felt like to love Ian Gallagher. She didn't feel sad or worried about him leaving to his little warzone soon.

Mickey didn't say anything else, but then she didn't give him the chance. She tucked the gun into the back of her shorts and pulled her top down over it. She knew Mickey was following her into the other room as she went towards the door, but she also knew without having to look that he was staying out of the line of sight of whoever was on the other side.

"The fuck do I have to talk to you about?" Mandy asked, opening the door and glaring at Lip. She glared because he actually sort of looked good. But then she'd always had the hots for Lip, but she'd already decided she hated him too.

He looked surprised at her tone, like he hadn't expected her to still be mad about whatever the hell she had been mad about. "Well how about we start with why the hell you punched Ian?" Lip asked, folding his arms over his chest and staring at her like that was going to make her crack or something.

"Fucker deserved it," Mandy practically spat out, "Now we done here, or you want to talk about the weather next?"

She could already feel her patience being chipped away at, all because Lip Gallagher was standing in front of her as right as fucking rain.

"What's wrong with you?" Lip asked, scowling a little, "Ian says you haven't been in school."

Mandy sneered. "Nothing is fucking wrong with _me_," she ground out through her teeth, reaching behind her and revealing the gun. She knocked it against her leg casually, opening the door a little wider. Lip was staring at her now like she'd lost her mind. Maybe for a moment she had. But having to sit and watch your older brother lie in a hospital comatose could do that to a person. "But I swear to God, something will be wrong with you if you and Ian don't stay the fuck away from me and my brother."

She had a horrible feeling that seeing Ian would just about make Mickey crack. Especially if he was with his boyfriend. She wondered if it had been that Ian had gotten a boyfriend now that had made Mickey want to do himself in. Or had it been something more?

And she was sure that she wasn't imagining the look of realisation in Lip's eyes and Mandy had to pretend that that didn't make her feel stupid. She had to pretend that it didn't bother her in the slightest that apparently all the people who were closest to her had known and Mickey and Ian and yet she hadn't had a clue.

Lip held his hands up, almost like a surrender, because Mandy knew one thing. She knew that Lip understood what it was like to be weirdly dependant on a sibling. Lip depended on Ian just as much as Mandy depended on Mickey. The difference was, the Gallaghers just had no problem showing it.

When she shut the door and turned to face him, Mickey said nothing. He just stared at her for a moment and then held out the smouldering cigarette in his hand that she didn't think he'd even taken a single drag from. And for some reason, she thought maybe that was his form of an apology. But he also thought that in some weird way, she had actually just made him feel a little better.

Mandy could hope at the very least.


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay, you can completely thank Vkdemon for this. She helped inspire the reason for me writing this chapter and the way this story is going to progress and she helped me with some of the facts. So go worship her, I owe her one :) hope you enjoy. . . **

Mickey sat on the chair next to her fidgeting, his legs bouncing up and down on the floor and his old shoes squeaking a little. There weren't all that many people in the waiting room which she thought was unusual, but Mandy was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to really think about too much else. She was all too aware of her brother next to her, of the tension rolling off of him in waves. It had been a feat convincing him to come down here at all and she kept expecting him to just kick off and blow up completely like he often did.

He'd pretty much returned to normal since he'd gotten home from the hospital, but she'd insisted he come to the check-up he'd been scheduled. She didn't completely know what it was for, but she didn't want there to be any possibility that Mickey could go that far off the rails again.

Although admittedly, she had made it difficult for him considering she'd hidden all of the painkillers in the house and had gotten rid of a lot of the guns. She didn't want to give him options. She knew that Mickey understood what she'd done, but he didn't comment. Mandy had to admit that she was almost glad that he hadn't, because she wasn't sure she wanted to have that conversation.

When Mickey was called in, Mandy stayed exactly where she was, twisting the bottom of her shirt in her fingers and staring at Mickey's retreating figure. She could see the tension in his muscles, but it made her feel better to see that he was actually sauntering into the office in his usual badass way. Mandy didn't know why she found that comforting, but she did.

It had been weird since she'd threatened Lip with that gun. Weird because she didn't know what to do with herself since the person she'd spent all of her time with she now wanted to shoot in the head. Some mornings she actually completely forgot about the whole thing when she woke up and once or twice she'd found herself dialling Ian's number before remembering.

And even if it took her a little longer, she always remembered the moment she saw Mickey, the moment she saw the dead look in his eyes. It was like someone had extinguished a light inside of him; and Mandy felt guilty because she'd never realised that light had been there until now it was gone.

Considering how long they'd been waiting, Mickey wasn't in with the doctor for very long, but judging by the scowl on her brother's face, she was guessing he'd been a difficult patient. Mickey threw himself back down into the chair next to her as the doctor who's name Mandy hadn't bothered to learn beckoned her over.

He took her into the small room that Mickey had just exited and shut the door with a weird final sort of click behind them.

"What?" she asked, not really one for the pleasantries, especially not when she was stressed out about Mickey and about why this doctor was looking at her like he was trying to work out how the hell he could phrase something.

"Miss Milkovich," he said in a voice that was no doubt supposed to be placating, "I need to talk to you about your brother, because I have a feeling that it would be close to pointless talking to him about this due to his temperament."

And Mandy wanted to snap at him and ask what the fuck he was talking about, because a guy with such a douchey hair cut had no right looking down on them. But curiosity to find out exactly what he thought he knew about Mickey overwhelmed the need to snap at him.

"Now your brother was admitted to the hospital upon trying to overdose and therefore displayed signs of depression, which we usually find are quite often linked with other conditions," he explained in what she could only describe as a 'doctor voice'. "And I'm pretty sure I've come to a conclusion as to what exactly your brother's condition is, but I just wanted to get some answers from you to check."

"Okay," Mandy said slowly, dragging the word out because she felt that if she did that maybe it would make her feel a little bit less tense. She didn't like this man using her brother's name in the same sentence as the word 'condition'. But she didn't feel like she could defend Mickey and say there was nothing wrong with him, because the guy had tried to kill himself and she was presently hiding all drugs in the house.

He smiled at her reassuringly, but there was nothing reassuring about it. Not at all.

"Miss Milkovich, this may seem like a strange question, but how would you describe your brother's temperament?" he asked, pushing his hands into the pockets of his wide coat. Mandy played with the edge of her shirt again. "Would you say he's generally an angry person?"

She felt too much like she was being interrogated and that instantly made her hackles rise, but she forced those thoughts down and chewed on her bottom lip for a minute before answering. "He gets pissed off pretty easily, yeah," she said, almost begrudgingly because she felt like she was betraying Mickey somehow by saying this, "He's not really a people person and gets into a lot of fights and stuff, but our family's always been a lot like that."

Even though she would admit that Mickey took it a little bit to the extreme sometimes. There was always a reason behind everyone else's anger, but Mickey sometimes just seemed completely irrational. She'd never quite learnt what it was exactly that made him snap, but he did so quite frequently. Always had done for as long as she could remember.

"How would you say he handles stress?" the doctor asked, "What would his standard reaction be in a stressful situation?"

Mandy shrugged, "Hit something, freak out or just leave I guess, why?"

"And in general how easy would you say it was for him to become stressed?" he asked, ignoring her question.

She chewed her bottom lip again, pulling off a piece of dry skin with her nails. "I don't know, he freaks out quite a lot I guess," she replied, "He's just always on edge, like he's on fire inside or something. And I mean, sometimes he's calm. When it's just the two of us in the house or something he'll mellow out and he seemed calmer, but I don't know, that doesn't happen very often."

She didn't like admitting that. She didn't like talking this way about the person who she'd practically idolised for all of her life. But for some reason she knew that it was necessary.

The doctor took a deep breath and Mandy could feel a weird sense of dread settling in the pit of her stomach.

"Miss Milkovich, I have pretty strong reasons to believe that your brother suffers from severe anxiety," he said, which honestly hadn't been what Mandy had been expecting to hear at all. She heard herself let out a long, heavy breath and knew that she was staring at him. "Anxiety is something that is linked quite closely to depression and I believe that your brother has suffered from it for quite some time."

She blinked, "Why?"

That didn't quite make sense in Mandy's brain, but at the same time. . .

"The indications I've found are things about his attitude," he told her, "People all react to stress different and an anxiety disorder is basically an extreme form of stress. As far as I can tell your brother reacts to stressful situations by lashing out and becoming angry, often quite irrationally. The physical symptoms for anxiety such as a raised heart rate, sweating and rapid breathing can often be confused with adrenaline and if your brother's getting angry a lot of the time then it's quite possible that what he is feeling he merely passes off as being a spur of the moment type of thing."

She scowled, "So why can't it just be adrenaline?"

"Because psychological signs are things such as irritability, fearing the loss of control, detachment and agitation," he said, rocking back on his heels a little bit and still offering her that same weak smile, "Does any of that sound like your brother?"

And Mandy hated to do so, but she nodded, because it did. That was Mickey. Mickey did all those things. He was pissed off almost constantly and was always paranoid about not being in control of a situation, it freaked him out to not be in control. And she would admit that Mickey did seem to sweat more than a normal person.

"Severe anxiety can result in panic attacks in most cases, which can also lead to occurrences such as heart attacks," he continued, "But I believe that by your brother using anger and violence as an outlet for his anxiety, he is bypassing his body's requirement for the panic attack."

_So that was good, right?_

"Of course, saying that it isn't in any way healthy for your brother to be putting himself under the amount of stress that he is doing so and the suicide attempt hints at the possibility that the anxiety is overpowering him and he is losing even more control that he is trying to maintain," he explained. Mandy shifted about uncomfortably because she wanted to grab this man by the front of his shirt and shake him until he gave her all the answers that she wanted. That she _needed_.

"So what am I supposed to do?" she asked, "Take him to yoga or some shit?"

The doctor laughed and the sound was actually genuine which surprised her, because before it had seemed like his actions had been to do nothing more than relieve the tension in the air.

"I don't quite think your brother is the type of person to attend yoga, although that would always be an option," he said, still smiling and for a second Mandy hated herself because she thought that this was the sort of guy that Ian would fuck. A bit older, but still sort of handsome. "I'd suggest that the only course of action at this point would be to put your brother on medication to control the anxiety, which is why I felt the need to discuss this with you because I doubt that Michael would remain calm long enough for me to explain this all to him."

And no, Mickey wouldn't have. He'd see this as a weakness.

She pulled a hand through her hair, chewing her lip as she teased out a knot with her fingers. She wished she had something to tie it up with. "We can't afford that sort of shit," she said, regretting that she had to say that, because she wished she could. She wished there was some way that Mickey could calm down.

"With this condition, Mickey qualifies for Medicare," he told her, holding out a slip of paper from his pocket that she didn't look at, but she was assuming was a prescription, "So the cost shouldn't be too much of an issue then. And although this should calm Mickey down, I'm not saying that there will be any drastic changes in his personality. He'll probably react a little more rationally to certain situations and be considerably less temperamental, but his manners wouldn't change at all and he would still be basically the same person."

Mandy frowned a little, because she couldn't quite imagine that. The Medicare thing was good news though, that was definitely good news.

"Do I have to tell him that I'm giving him medication?" she asked, because she could imagine how that conversation would go.

The doctor laughed again. "I would suggest crushing it into his food for the first few weeks or something like that," he said when his laughter died out, "But if the medication works, then he should have calmed enough to stop panicking about the loss of control and therefore should in theory be more open to listening to your reasoning."

And if not, she'd just keep on putting it into his food. "I cook for him anyway, so it won't be that hard," she commented, "I can just put it in his eggs each morning."

"He has to take it three times a day," the doctor said, smiling like this whole thing amused him greatly. No doubt it did. "Good luck." Mandy had a feeling she was going to need it.


	4. Chapter 4

**So hey guys, sorry for the delay with this. I kind of forgot where the hell I was going with it. But yeah, thanks to my lovely new Beta, Diva0789 with the editing and also to Billie for helping me with this storyline wise.**

Mandy keeps the pills hidden underneath her mattress and all of the other pills in the house she just throws out. She knows it's stupid, knows that if Mickey was seriously going to try to kill himself again, then he would probably just put a gun to his temple. But it makes her feel better. It makes her feel better for there to be none in the house. Even if she has to put up with the strange, twisted guilty and uncomfortable look on Mickey's face when Iggy comes barrelling through the house screaming about why there's nothing to kill his hangover with.

Mandy just smacks the fucker upside the head and tells him to grow a pair.

But that's just to distract herself so that she doesn't have to look at Mickey and that damn expression for too long.

She can't look at him sometimes, finds it difficult more often than not. She can't stop herself from trying to work out just _how_ she didn't know. She had two opportunities to work it out, with Ian and with her brother. One of them had to have left some sort of clue, some way that she could have picked up on what the hell had been going on. Because, maybe she could understand it if they had just been fucking.

But… this was something Mickey had tried to kill himself over. This was something that her brother had gotten so emotionally invested in, that he felt like he couldn't handle it anymore. The brother that she'd never really been completely sure had a fully functioning conscience, let alone a heart and feelings.

Afterwards there was always the thought that it had been a really fucking creepy thought process, but sometimes she tried to picture it. She tried to picture how they would be together. She knew even a Mickey in love would not be a Mickey that was sweet or caring or anything like that. But Ian had to have seen something in him, there had to have been something different about the way Mickey was with him that allowed Mickey to fall in love.

Mandy found herself wondering if maybe, it could have just been that with Ian, her brother's heart maybe didn't feel like it was about to beat out of his chest. She wondered if maybe without even realising it, Ian had been able to calm him down, had been everything that her brother needed. And that made a part of her want to somehow make it work, for just half a second before she remembered that she wasn't a fucking match maker and Ian Gallagher had already fucked her brother up enough. She didn't need to focus on fixing them, because knowing Mickey he had probably shattered it beyond belief.

All Mandy needed to focus on, was fixing her brother.

Because Mickey wasn't the same. He acted the same, or at least tried. But sometimes he'd just get this blank look on his face and Mandy couldn't work out if he was thinking of something, planning something or just switching off.

She hung around him more than she ever would have done before, even if it was just the two of them sitting in his room and passing a cigarette back and forth. He didn't comment on how out of character it was, because she knew he understood. She knew he understood that she just had to check, she just had to check that he was still there, that he was alright.

Even though a part of her doubted her brother would be alright again.

She could hear the shower running in the bathroom attached to Mickey's room and nobody else was home so Mandy took the opportunity to creep into her room – although she could admit that the creeping was actually unnecessary – and stuck her hand underneath her mattress, feeling around for the packet of pills Mickey needed to take.

He had to have one pill three times a day and if Mickey thought it was strange how often she was cooking for him or fetching him drinks, he didn't say anything. He probably just chalked it up to her checking on him.

She crushed the pill into a powder with the flat of a knife blade and then stirred it into Mickey's eggs. And honestly, she had never been gladder for the fact that Mickey didn't so much as glance at the food he ate, just shovelled it into his mouth. "Oy fuck face, eggs!" she shouted through the wood, banging a fist on Mickey bedroom door and being rewarded with nothing more than a low grunt of acknowledgment.

And when Mickey padded out of his room, barefoot and wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants hanging low on his hips, Mandy took a moment to admit to herself that he maybe did look a little better. She didn't know if it was the fact he was clean, water droplets still running down his chest and dripping from his hair, but there definitely seemed to be a healthier look to his skin than there ever had been before. He didn't look clammy and too tight within his own flesh. The dark circles underneath his eyes were smaller and paler than she'd ever seen them and he actually looked a healthy sort of weight. And that last part she put down to the fact that Mickey was actually eating three semi-decent meals a day.

Still, she couldn't say if here had been any sort of change due to the pills yet. He'd been on them just under two weeks now and Mandy couldn't work out if he seemed calmer or not. She didn't know what sort of change she was supposed to be looking for. She also thought that maybe there hadn't really been any situations when he possibly could have become stressed out or anxious. They hadn't really left the house and certainly to her knowledge Mickey hadn't done.

Mandy had only gone out to get food and some smokes and then had come right back, rushing into Mickey's room with some lame excuse about needing a lighter just to check that he was still breathing.

They ate in silence and Mandy watched Mickey shovel in his eggs and toast, covering the lot in far too much ketchup and she felt a little guilty for the fact that he hadn't got a clue that she was slipping him medication. When he found out, because she would have to tell him eventually, she knew that, she wondered if he would blow up at her.

She wondered how she was going to explain to him that this was for the best.

"Hey Mands?" he asked as he was about to walk out of the room, eggs finished and one hand paused on the door frame of the kitchen as he twisted back to look at her. Their eyes met and Mandy had to remind herself to breath. "Thanks," Mickey muttered, the word coming out lower and softer than she could ever have imagined her brother was capable of speaking.

She knew he wasn't just thanking her for the eggs.

She just smiled at him, the corner of her mouth curving upwards slightly because she didn't know how to say that he didn't ever have to thank her for anything. Because she should have seen what was wrong. He had always protected her and Mandy hadn't been there for him at all.

Because the image of Mickey standing there in the doorway to her room over a month ago, mouth open like he was about to say something and his grip on the wood of the door turning his knuckles white was burned into her eyelids. He'd just stood there not speaking for a long time, until Mandy had gotten bored of the theatrics and told him, "_Fuck off, assface, I'm not giving you any money_."

That scene was all she could see when she blinked. And all she could think was that Mickey had always been there, had always known when she needed someone to just sit beside her and fill the silence, when she needed him to offer to beat someone up just to make her smile. He'd always known what she'd needed and she'd always taken it for granted thinking that he was her big brother, it was his job.

But now, now Mandy was going to be better. Now Mandy was going to learn how to teach Mickey to live again. Even if it sucked the life right out of her, she'd learn. After all, it was the least she could do really.


End file.
